Seth Pimlott

Seth Pimlott is a London-based artist making experimental narrative films. Interested in collaborative history and community engagement as material, his practice often involves workshops as an integral part of developing a film. These workshops collectively examine themes connected to the history of ideas and circumstance, which create a dialectical exploration with the personal identity of participants. At a time when both the struggle of isolation and the power of mass protest are simultaneously omnipresent - Seth crucially explores the concept of together.

For La Escuela (Gasworks, 2016-2018), Seth collaborated with the Latin American community in South London. Listening, sharing, and interweaving narratives from groups including Sin Fronteras, an advocacy group for young women, to students of a Spanish language Saturday school. La Escuela takes a celebratory, but complex look at the generational exchange of cultural identity.

In Alone Together (Whitechapel Gallery, 2018), 30 young people from across London worked with Seth to investigate the theme of ‘transitions and turnings’. The workshops included group yoga and performance practice, as well as, exploring concepts of memory and sensation. Together they produced two films looking in tandem at physical dynamics as artistic exploration and our bodies as a tool for change.

Significant to Seth’s process is that participants, or co-collaborators, are active from initial discussion through to production: playing lead roles, even contributing to the film’s soundtracks. From cross-cultural experience to multi-generational perspectives, Seth’s practice engages and elevates personal narrative via collective sharing.

BLOK’s interview with Seth Pimlott

Tell us a bit about yourself - who you are, your background, where and what you create.

SP: I’m an artist and filmmaker, I’m based at Somerset House Studios, and I make films with galleries for exhibition and music videos. Each film can look very different but what connects them is a focus on social and political issues and a collaborative development process with the artists, individuals, and groups I work with.

Your recent work Alone Together was in part born out of a group yoga practice. Can you talk us through the project?

SP: Alone Together, which is a 2 channel video installation, was made with a group of young people at Whitechapel Gallery. The group was diverse, with people from different backgrounds and corners of Tower Hamlets, but what connected them was a burgeoning interest in art and the fact they were a similar age, more or less on the cusp of adulthood.

When I arrived they had an idea they wanted to explore with me which was resonant for them, which was ‘transition.’ I thought it would be interesting to explore this idea through the modalities of the body, the dynamic centre of all transitions in our lives; using our bodies as both the tool and object of inquiry.

I wanted to run the project in a way that I would have found exciting and useful at their age. Having an exploratory relationship with your own body, developing a curious dialogue with it is something that would have served me well when I was younger. But also for a group of potential artists, it is important to learn that your body is your first, and sometimes the only resource. And although none of us are experts, and in fact, we can often feel very alienated from our bodies, it is important to get used to that.

At the same time, as an artist, what was so fascinating for me was the emerging radical energy of the group, their specific potential as individuals, and how that spoke to something more universal about people that age and that moment in your life. Alone Together was about figuring or capturing that effervescent combination of anxiety and joy, without fetishizing young bodies.

We read that some of your work has been created through workshops, engaging others in your creativity, and embracing a collective spirit. What do these workshops involve and how do they play out?

SP: They look very different from week to week and project to project, but when they are good they resemble something like collective artistic research: drawing from the personal experience of the participants, addressing clearly articulated questions that are meaningful to the group or individual. A lot of it depends on relationships built on trust that develop over a long period of time. Only when everyone feels secure, and that it is clear that we all equally have some skin in the game so to speak, can you begin to take risks and move into more experimental territory.

Why do you feel group performances and group-created art is so powerful?

SP: If you understand the public realm as a kind of medium that some artists work with, like film or paint, for example, there is nothing inherently powerful about it, nothing special in and of itself. When it comes together (and I’m thinking of other artists’ work here, and not my own; although it is something I strive for), what is being opened up is a space where people have the opportunity to experiment with their identity with others in a way that can challenge or play with perceptions about themselves. It is about capturing a kind of stylised reality - not quite performing a role, but not quite inhabiting your everyday identity either. And there is a huge amount of intrigue and beauty in that space for me; relief at letting go some of the things we think define ourselves, the possibility of collective joy, the possibility of collective sorrow. We understand these things as meaningful in and of themselves – perhaps the most meaningful things that happen in our lives when they play out in social rituals like parties, ceremonies of birth, partnership or death for example - but are also I believe the kinds of states that allow us to glimpse alternative ways of being and acting in the world, new ways of living together. When participatory art works well it harnesses some of this energy but takes it down an unfamiliar path.

You often work with a mix of amateurs and professionals within the same group. Can you give us an insight into why you like working with this dynamic?

SP: It is important in my work that people who may not have had a great deal of exposure to artists or dancers or whatever, can meet and work with them and see that their contributions are valued equally. It’s fun and can be elevating for everyone involved.

There is a great quote about Derek Jarman, that his films have ‘the whiff of the school play about them.’ It’s meant as a compliment, that his films are not polished on purpose, they are more than the sum of their parts and bursting with human qualities. I like seeing the frayed edges of things, the imperfections, people peering around curtains in the background.

Who or what is the most important influence on your work?

SP: I work with my partner Pearl on most projects. She is very sensitive to things in the work I do not pick up on, and a constructive critic. She is my first audience and knows what I need to hear.

What do you do when you get stuck in a creative rut?

SP: I do all the normal procrastination, but at some point, you have to be boneheaded about a problem and just keep on banging at it until it looks ok. I try to trust my instincts, be single-minded, and persevere.

ISSUE #04 : together